


A bargain worth the making

by sprx77



Series: Until my roots become your veins [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: But he just you know, But still in the canon universe, Founders Era, Human Kyuubi | Nine-tails | Kurama, In which Kurama is the proverbial Merlin to Mito and Hashirama's Perenelle and Nicholas Flamel, Just a short nap, Kurama was planning to take a NAP, Multi, Old Immortals, Other, To be all indignant, Took human form for a minute, Young Immortals, and mentorship relationship, that's just a metaphor for the immortality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-31 14:01:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18592717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sprx77/pseuds/sprx77
Summary: "You want towhat!?" Kurama flows out of his indulged prison to snarl in Hashirama's face, the second he hears some nonsense about enslaving his siblings.One, that sounds like areally bad plan. Two, he doesn't want to deal withanyof that nonsense.There goes his nap.





	A bargain worth the making

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Uintuva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Uintuva/gifts).



> (In which the idea of Hashirama/Kurama was enthralling and Mito slipped in because I suddenly OT3 it. In this universe, Kurama went "Oh, no... guess I am totally trapped in your mediocre ink seal,,, guess I will just NAP,,, for THIRTY YEARS,,, at LEAST,,, as I have not been able to nap for _centuries_. Truly, tragic, that I cannot Escape this incredibly well-crafted prison, it worked on the first attempt, the human is a genius." 
> 
> I reserve the right to rewrite this into a longer fic that promises to be *heartwrenching*, okay?

Kurama is three months into his unexpectedly one-sided vacation when he hears something alarming enough to take note of.

As a rule, he could care less what individual humans do. He occasionally devastates large groups of evil ones, removing the stain of concentrated malice from the chakra of the world, but one or two humans? Don’t usually concern him.

(Okay, _sometimes_ the really ‘powerful’ ones are like ants, and his current cage is living proof that one in a million of them has _talent_ , but the heart of the matter is he’d planned to be out of action for a few decades and it was impressed curiosity that led him to tripping the witch’s trap in the first place.)

Aside from those one-in-a-million redheads, though?

Not his business.

Despite that, what he hears sends him sliding through the holes in his cage, bubbling back into reality with nary a thought for his half-hearted plan to _nap_ for half a century or so.

The redhead is more alarmed and annoyed than horrified, indignant that her spellwork fails, but really what had she expected? It’s a _fascinatingly_ well-developed seal for a human, but—it’s only in four dimensions.

Cute, really, and just the excuse he needed—

“You want to do _what_?”

His mostly-voluntary impulse retirement is an _entirely different creature_ to what the little man is suggesting. Kurama had already been thinking about sleep—Sage, _sleep_ —when he saw the little witch and her unflinching determination, her ambitious plan.

He had been utterly floored that, if he wanted, the seal could _hold_ him. Like a storm in a glass bottle, but if he allowed it… No one had _attempted_ such since his father, and seeing the primitive ink on human skin reminded him of the Sage’s parting words.

She was already a storm in human form, the taste of his father’s blood distant but there, and a young god stepped into her soul to a rictus of burning gold.

Now the god is pissed and, quite on accident, discovers he’s mimicked the shape. Dark skin when he raises a hand in disbelief, garnet-red hair more akin to the witch behind him than his own fur—the insult bristled and slid off one bare shoulder—sliding along his wrist, his knees as he took a threatening step forward.

The tree shaman blinked. His mouth dropped open without sound.

Kurama growled and red pulsed vivid in that throat, up his jaw to his cheeks.

The man cleared his throat uselessly, then visibly shook it off.

“Pardon me?” he attempts politely, half-choked.

“Oh, don’t play stupider than you already are.” Kurama narrowed his eyes. The witch huffed.

The man blinked.

“Oh, could you hear? Only, how are you human? How did you escape?” He seems remarkably unafraid for someone _other_ than the clever witch, though maybe he assumes she’ll protect him? Though, he does swallow hard, adam’s apple shaking.

“Yes,” The witch muscles in, sharp elbows jabbing until she’s between them. At some point Kurama and his half-contained aura had gotten well-within the human’s air, anger fueling him.

“How _did_ you escape?” She demands primly.

Kurama guffaws, unable to smother fondness in time. It’s been so _long_ since he last met a mind such as hers, shattering and bright.

“It was a very good first attempt,” He allows indulgently, and unthinkingly dodges the knifehand to his kidney. The baby witch is vicious and brilliant, so shiny a jewel it almost hurts to look at, glimmering with potential. How have his messengers not swiped her up?

 If she and her fledgling attempts at spell-weaving hadn’t been there to back up the shaman’s plans, he’d have never given a passing thought to the crazy plan. But she was, and _he_ was, and the Shaman looked between them with more curiosity than fear.

Insane, both of them. Kurama has to stifle affection for that particular streak of madness, the ambition that promises _entertainment_ and _companionship_.

He hasn’t taken human form in nearly six hundred years, yet here he is. Shoving on a grumpy, disapproving look so the young immortals don’t start a fight way out of their league. Or, worse yet, _succeed_ , and throw off the entire balance of the world in doing so.

The fury he felt upon hearing the scheme has died down to mere embers, an older brother’s impotent rage stilled into a teacher’s exasperation.

And here he is, garbed in human skin entire _lunar cycles_ before his little witch had even _approached_ him in her sprung trap, because these two fools he’s chosen might have actually _done it_.

Anyone else would have lost life and limb for the mere _presumption_.

Kurama pinches the bridge of his nose, somehow aware it’ll loosen the tension from something so mortal as a headache.

“To be _very_ clear, you are not enslaving my siblings to use for mutually assured destruction among human settlements.”

Both startle.

The shaman says “siblings?” at the same moment the witch squints at him, likely chaffing under the directive—but she changes tune as the shaman speaks, and the sheer burning need for knowledge had never left her eyes to begin with.

“You—” He points to the shaman. “—are a sage. Do you _realize_ what it would do to the natural energy of the world, the balance, if you took away the tailed beasts who together make the world tree?”

When the man just stares, Kurama sighs.

“Look, I’ll use simple words. In ten years, maybe twenty, nothing obvious would happen. That’s the blink of an eye to us and the scale of the world. But thirty, forty, fifty, without us contributing to the ebb and flow of natural chakra, and maintaining our domains? Everything goes to shit.”

He started counting on his fingers, so small and brown and human.  “Natural disasters, time fluctuations, odd mutants crawling out of the sea. You name it. What my siblings do, maintaining the natural order of time and space and the elements, is absolutely essential to life on this planet. Take _me_ for example.”

Kurama took a breath.

“Imagine a world without light. Corruption festering, unchallenged, and that darkness begetting more darkness until the world is steeped in a miasma of suffering and cruelty, clogging the very air. Even the kindest souls will have been steeped in the malice, abound in the natural chakra _emenating from the planet_ and be warped, from _birth_. No one will consider the good solutions, or carry hope, and despair will triumph over the hearts of man until I devoted entire _decades_ fixing it.”

“The world is like that _now_ ,” The shaman protests, immediately, only to slam his mouth shut when Kurama levels the most unamused of looks at him. His jaw is set stubbornly, though.

“You ridiculous summer child.” He finds himself saying, annoyance curling in his gut. “The fact that you can _see something wrong_ with your suffering proves otherwise.”

“That I can…” Hashirama sputters. “What do you mean, of _course_ I—”

He breaks off in frustration. The witch puts a calming hand on his forearm.

Kurama looks at the place they touch, halfway torn between an immortal’s intolerance for veritable gnats and an older, smarter immortal’s pleasure at two promising students, at the promise of teaching and conversation and new perspectives—once they stop being embarrassingly insipid—

“And _you_.” He glares at Mito. “You’re not ready for that kind of sealwork.”

She blinks at the admittance, latching onto the implied promise, the unspoken _yet_.

“What can we do, then?” Presses the shaman, unwavering in his pursuit of a better world. As determined in this as she is in learning and power. Together they trip all different kinds of instincts, sliding together in this human form more powerfully than they might in his nine-tailed skin; his vision turns to the future, half-eclipsed in the fifth dimension, one in which he can hardly tell where dark skin starts and darker begins, limbs together, where garnet hair tangles with ruby, and clever fingers smell like chalk and plants and ink and hold fast to each other.

One immortal looks to two others, new and barely touched by their godhood, unblooded.

“We begin.”

**Author's Note:**

> God it's been so long since I wrote anything. Well, who needs homework anyway? Aha. Ha. Ha.
> 
> Title from Astolat's Victory Condition:
> 
> "And I didn’t know I was going to make it when I came out on the sand and saw it waiting.  
> But I knew that I wouldn’t unless I spent myself  
> Down to the last credit  
> Buying victory with pawned scraps of my armor and my strength and pain  
> A bargain worth the making, only I wouldn’t know until the end  
> Whether the offer was acceptable  
> And either way I’d have to suffer just the same."


End file.
